Rand Paul threading the foreign policy needle
by digby
Over at Salon this morning I wrote about Rand Paul’s “foreign policy.” That’s in scare quotes because it’s incoherent. And incoherent foreign policy is frightening.
One of the articles of faith among both the libertarian true believers and the mainstream media is the idea that Senator Rand Paul is a man who does not play the usual partisan political game. The true believers think this comes from a deep well of integrity and intellectual consistency. The mainstream media mostly sees him as a “wacko-bird” to use their favorite maverick John McCain’s term. In neither case does it occur to them that Rand Paul is quite serious about becoming president.
Did I mention scary? He doesn’t appear to be running to make a statement or influence the Party. He’s running for real. Paul knows he can’t win with a libertarian isolationist policy like his father’s. So he’s trying to finesse his way into some kind of hybrid “realist-non-interventionist” yet patriotic and hawkish role that makes absolutely no sense to anyone. Perhaps he figures he can confuse everyone so much they won’t notice.
But foreign policy and national security are very important to conservative ideology and they brook very little in the way of dissident thought. In case you hadn’t noticed …